Malcolm McDowell

Christopher Plummer

Simon Ward

Peter Firth

David Wood

John Gielgud

Trevor Howard

Richard Johnson

Ray Milland

Gilles Béhat

Tim Pigott-Smith

David Daker

Christopher Blake

Barry Jackson

Ron Pember

Jacques Maury

Pascale Christophe

Judy Buxton

Penny Irving

Tricia Newby

Evelyn Cordeau

Jeanne Patou

John Serret

Gerard Paquis

Jean Driant

Elliott Cooper

Roland Viner

Steven Pacey

Kim Lotis

Colin Rix

James Walsh

Jane Anthony

Paul Rosebury

Paul Henley

David Arnold

James Cormack

Jack Gold

Benjamin Fisz

Maude Spector

Howard Barker

Richard Hartley

Gerry Fisher

Anne V. Coates

Syd Cain

Maurice Cain

Derek Meddings

Jacques Roitfeld

Ivan Sharrock

Peter Allwork

Iain Weston

Neville Smallwood

Bernard Ford

Tony Bianchi

James Gilbert

Susie Hill

Jonathan Bates

Neil Williams

Action

Drama

Aces High

Les Productions Jacques Roitfeld

S. Benjamin Fisz Productions

France

United Kingdom

English

Français

Deutsch

world war i

pilot

dogfight

1910s

***What was it like to be a fighter pilot in WW1?***  

An inexperienced young Brit straight from the academy (Peter Firth) arrives on the Western front in northern France to assist in the air war against the Germans during WW1. One week in the lives of the pilots of a Royal Flying Corps squadron is chronicled as they struggle with the stresses & risks intrinsic to their profession. Malcolm McDowell plays the Major, Christopher Plummer the Captain and Simon Ward an anxiety-stricken colleague.  

"Aces High" (1976) came out a decade after the exceptional “The Blue Max” (1966) with the former addressing British pilots and the latter Germans. While “Blue Max” is all-around superior and more epic, “Aces High” ain’t no slouch. It successfully brings you back in time to see what it was like for men in the brand new profession of fighter piloting. This is a “man’s movie” in the manner of, say, “Lawrence of Arabia” (1962), but a few females show up in the last act. 

The film runs 1 hour, 54 minutes, and was shot in England (Buckinghamshire, Essex & Eton College with studio work done in Hertfordshire).

GRADE: B/B-

CinemaSerf

Perhaps because many of the cast here all look so very young, this film has an extra potency as a depiction of some of the inexperienced fliers who fought in the Great War. It all centres around the young "Crawford" (Simon Ward) who joins a squadron commanded by "Gresham" (Malcolm McDowell) and his adjutant "Sinclair" (Christopher Plummer). Green in the extreme, he finds himself fighting for his life every time he is airborne, and he must also balance the increasingly delicate needs of his commander who must deal, on a daily basis, with the mounting death toll amongst his Royal Flying Corps airmen. Jack Gold manages to capture well the sense of foreboding and the nerve-end existence of these youngsters as well as offering us some spectacular aerial photography and combat scenes that give us an authentic looking experience of just how perilous their lives were and just how flimsy their aircraft were, too. McDowell overacts a bit, almost as much as Plummer under-delivers - neither here quite hit the spot, but Ward and Peter Firth's "Croft" do, and their efforts are convincing. Time hasn't really been so kind to this production, but forty years later it still offers a plausible glimpse into the dangers in the lives of young men who had barely learnt to shave. No, it's not the "Blue Max" (1966) but it isn't a bad attempt at telling a similar story.

Aces High 1976 Trailer | Malcolm McDowell | Christopher Plummer

Aces High( 1976)

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A review by Wuchak

Written by Wuchak on Thu Nov 28 2019

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